In
this week's readings, we had the opportunity to take a step back from the
overview of Japanese consoles and games to focus on broader social issues that
partly frame the consumption and discourses of video games. While we have
discussed issues such as gender and gaming previously in the class, we now try
to tackle the question of the Otaku consumer type. Who are they and how do they
consume media differently than other people?
While
many writers tried to pin down what defines Otakus, we can identify several
grand discourses that try to analyze them. First is what Thomas Lamarre (2009) defines
as the Gainax discourse of fan empowerment, best represented by Okada’s
writings. As Galbraith indicated, Okada’s Otakuology
puts emphasis on seeing fans of visual medias as a form of new humans (shinjinrui) with enhanced capabilities
for understanding preferentiality and visual details. While this reading of
Otaku is very empowering, it does little to make sense of today’s Otaku culture
and the importance of Moe for example. It also posits the Otaku on the fringe
of society, excluding it from mainstream influence, but granting them agency to
reinvent new way to deal with the world (social networks or masculinities).
However, it seems to me that the promises of Otaku fall short to their
potential as political or social mobilization of media consumers is very
unlikely (Galbraith’s account of the Otaku demonstration in Akihabara is a
testimony to that). Their potentiality, however, seems to be channeled in a
different way.
Clashing
with this perspective of Otaku is the media and government’s harnessing of the
international prestige and economic power of Otaku-related media. Japanese
society has come a long way since it was first confronted with the Otaku
movement; the mainstream media, anxious to make sense of horrible crimes
committed in the 1990s such as the Miyazaki killings and the seemingly degraded
state of the youth, created a image of Otaku that was more akin to sexual
perverts than media enthusiasts. We now know that such media coverage were
somehow manipulated (the journalist covering the Mizayaki incident later
confessed that the shooting of Miyazaki’s room for television showing was
manipulated to make it look like a very small part of his lolicon video collection made the majority of his media
possessions) culminating in a famous media coverage of the Comic Market where
journalists described the event as a place ‘full of Miyazakis’(Miyamoto, 2013).
Nowadays, under the cool-Japan umbrella, the government has acknowledges the
existence of Otaku as a form of economic resource and source of international
appeal. However, this new appreciated is only the signal for yet another
reconstruction of the representation of Japanese media fans. Densha Otoko, National Tourism AgencyOtaku Japan maps, the linking of Otaku and traditional Japan through Wabi-Sabi
and late night shows involving Otaku as showcases of slightly unbalanced but
sympathetic youth is still a misrepresentation of what Otaku are, but at least
it is not as offensive as it previously was.
Maybe
an understanding of Otaku culture should involve a rethinking of our
preconceptions of media fans as solitary individuals as well a close reading of
their activity. What I have in mind is close to Galbraith’s recent research on Bishōjo games and their player where he demonstrates that Otaku’s patterns of
communication is mediated by interactive texts put in networking situations
(Galbraith, 2011). As he states, Love Plus finds its ultimate appeal by
introducing each other’s girlfriend and discussing individual experiences with
the simulation.
Additional Sources
Galbraith,
Patrick. "Bishōjo Games: ‘Techno-Intimacy’ and the Virtually Human in
Japan." Game Study: the
international journal of computer game research volume 11.issue 2 (2011). [http://gamestudies.org/1102/articles/galbraith].
Online.
Lamarre, Thomas.
The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of
Animation. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press. 2009.
Miyamoto, Naoki.
Eroge bunkakenkyû gairon: Introduction to Cultural Studies Adult Games.
Tokyo: Sôgôkagaku Shuppan, 2013. Print.
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